Alaska Judge’s Clerk Alleges Retaliation by US Attorney Office

The woman whose report of sexual misconduct ultimately prompted an Alaska federal judge to resign alleges in a whistleblower complaint that leaders of the US attorney’s office there retaliated against her after she came forward with her claims.

The whistleblower, who was a judicial law clerk before joining the Alaska US attorney’s office, said she was denied a permanent job as a federal prosecutor because she informed supervisors in the fall of 2022 of US District Judge Joshua Kindred’s sexual misconduct. She made the allegations in an interview with Bloomberg Law and in a complaint filed with the US Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency that investigates federal sector whistleblower claims.

She said she learned that she no longer had a job in the office through an office-wide email sent on Sept. 26, 2023 by her supervisor, informing everyone that her initial one-year term employment wouldn’t be extended, and it was her last day.

“My stomach dropped” when the email went out, the woman recalled in the interview. She had recently moved back to Alaska and was setting up her life there when she got the news.

“I have to live with this forever,” said the woman, whom Bloomberg Law isn’t naming since she’s a survivor of sexual misconduct. “I have to live with being sexually assaulted by someone that was supposed to be my mentor. And now I have to live with this. I have to live with being ousted from my dream job and ousted from my home. And I just hope that talking about it has some impact on others.”

The OSC complaint, filed in February, signals ongoing and possibly wider scrutiny of the Justice Department stemming from Kindred’s misconduct during his four years on the bench in Anchorage.

The former law clerk’s allegations were also reported to DOJ’s inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility, which examines allegations of misconduct by department attorneys, according to internal administrative proceeding records viewed by Bloomberg Law.

The US attorney’s office didn’t answer detailed questions about the allegations. Reagan Zimmerman, a spokesperson for the office, said in an emailed statement that when the “office received disturbing allegations, management promptly reported it to the court and the appropriate authorities within the Department of Justice to allow for proper investigation.”

“Throughout this time, we have been mindful of the rights of our employees and the importance of the integrity of the justice system,” she said.

The Justice Department’s inspector general’s office declined to comment. Spokespeople for OSC and the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility said their offices are unable to comment or confirm the existence of investigations.

In her complaint, the whistleblower also claimed her request to be detailed to another office within the Justice Department was initially denied in November 2022, despite telling the US attorney’s top deputy, Kathryn Vogel, that she was afraid of Kindred and didn’t want to work in the same building as him.

The complaint requests that OSC open an inquiry into the purported retaliation at the US attorney’s office but doesn’t seek any other specific relief.

The OSC’s investigations into past civil servant whistleblower claims have led to financial settlements and corrective actions like reinstating employees, or in rarer cases, prompted discipline against government managers.

An order released July 8 by a judiciary panel said that Kindred subjected his former clerk and others in his chambers to an abusive, sexualized, and hostile work environment.

According to the order, Kindred defended his conduct to the panel, and contended that the sexual encounters with his former law clerk — which he initially denied entirely before admitting to them — were consensual. Kindred announced his resignation three days before the order was released but hasn’t publicly responded to the findings. He couldn’t be reached for comment for this article.

The whistleblower’s attorney, Kevin Owen with Gilbert Employment Law, said in a statement that his client “bravely blew the whistle on not only Mr. Kindred’s misdeeds, but also the misconduct of U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors who appeared in his courtroom.”

The office has been led since May 2022 by Alaska US Attorney Lane Tucker, who, the complaint notes, has applied to fill an earlier vacancy on the state’s three-judge federal district court.

In a July 12 staff-wide email reviewed by Bloomberg Law, Tucker said the judiciary order and Kindred’s resignation “resulted from prompt reporting by our office.”

Whistleblower Allegations

According to the OSC complaint, the whistleblower told Vogel in fall 2022 that the judge discussed receiving nude photographs from a more senior attorney in the office, Karen Vandergaw. The ex-clerk said she was interviewed about the issue by OPR in March 2023, but the status of that investigation is unknown.

Tucker said in a filing in a separate internal administrative proceeding that she viewed the former law clerk as spreading gossip and showing poor judgment by discussing the nude photographs allegedly sent to the judge.

Kindred in November 2023 stopped hearing cases in which Vandergaw was listed as a prosecutor, but it’s unclear exactly when any potentially inappropriate conduct between the judge and her began. Vandergaw didn’t return a request for comment.

Kindred ultimately admitted to having received the nude photographs from the senior prosecutor, according to the July judicial order. Bloomberg Law has reported the prosecutor who sent the photos was Vandergaw and that her effective demotion was announced to the office one day after the order’s release.

Detail Request

The whistleblower also said she received mixed messages from management about her request to work in an office outside of Alaska while Kindred was still in the courthouse.

Her request in November 2022 for an external assignment was at first denied, she said. But then days later it was granted and she spent seven months working a detail at the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC, according to the complaint.

Vogel and Tucker both denied that the whistleblower’s request for a detail was ever rejected, according to papers they filed in the separate internal administrative proceeding.

The whistleblower also claimed that another leader in the office told her she should have no issue getting funding to work past her one-year term in Alaska. He backtracked on this assurance as her return to Anchorage grew closer, she said.

Then she interviewed for a permanent job and two of the interviewers told her that they’d recommended her for the position. Instead, she soon learned her employment had ended in the office-wide farewell message.

“It was one of the hardest days of my life,” the whistleblower said. “And by then, I had seen some stuff. It was cruel.”